Nguyen v. Bank of America, N.A.

Background

Elle Nguyen sued Bank of America, N.A., on behalf of a proposed class of former Bank employees who alleged that the Bank failed to pay accrued but unused vacation time when they left employment. Nguyen moved to certify three proposed groups:

- A state-statutes class covering people who ended their Bank employment in specified states or the District of Columbia with a positive vacation balance that was not paid. - A breach-of-contract class covering people who ended their Bank employment in the United States with a positive vacation balance that was not paid. - A California subclass covering people who ended their Bank employment in California with a positive vacation balance that was not paid.

The Bank’s employee handbook stated that employees eligible to accrue vacation would be paid for accrued but unused vacation time when their employment ended. But some employees—including people in specific pay bands, employees earning commissions, and people working fewer than 20 hours per week—were not eligible to accrue paid vacation.

Nguyen worked for the Bank as a Loan Officer from February 2017 through May 2020. Her positions included exempt and non-exempt roles, and each of her three primary roles entitled her to earn commissions. The incentive-plan agreements for those roles stated that Loan Officers did not earn paid time-off benefits such as vacation. Nguyen nevertheless testified that Workday showed a positive vacation balance of more than 200 hours when she left. The Bank disputed that account and provided a Workday readout showing that she had not accrued vacation time.

Class-certification analysis

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 requires a proposed class representative to satisfy several requirements, including typicality. Typicality asks whether the representative’s claims are sufficiently similar to the class members’ claims to protect the class’s interests fairly and adequately.

The court held that Nguyen could not satisfy typicality. The proposed class members’ claims depended partly on whether their employment agreements or employer policies entitled them to accrue vacation. The evidence suggested that Nguyen’s agreements specifically stated that she was not eligible to earn paid vacation. The court therefore concluded that Nguyen likely could not establish the contractual right on which the other proposed class members’ claims could depend.

The court also found that Nguyen’s reliance on Workday made her claims different from the claims of other proposed class members. Rather than relying on contractual language, she would need to rely on internal company records to establish her right to payment. The court stated that this evidence was not probative of the other class members’ claims.

The court further rejected Nguyen’s argument that her temporary work on the Bank’s Paycheck Protection Program made her representative of the class. The Bank confirmed at the hearing that she temporarily moved to that program while keeping her official title and employment benefits. The evidence identified her final role as an exempt Senior FC Lending Officer.

Rulings

The court denied Nguyen’s motion for class certification because she did not show that her claims were typical of the proposed classes. The denial was without prejudice to a future class-certification motion filed by a different class representative. The court declined to address the other class-certification requirements because the typicality problem required denial of Nguyen’s motion. A footnote stated that any future motion by a different representative should include a fuller evidentiary record concerning whether accurate records were available to decide liability on a class-wide basis.

The court separately granted the parties’ consolidated sealing motion in full, finding compelling reasons to seal material that largely concerned confidential employee information and human-resources policies. The parties were ordered to file public-docket versions of specified exhibits with the redactions or unredacted copies described in the order.